Is your sweet HS junior in a rotten and surly mood right now?

[livn487]

SAME here-- junior d is so edgy and wanting to pick a fight. I can hardly keep my patience. She's done with her AP's and has a few finals in her non AP classes next week. I feel like all I do is talk to her about losing "priviledges" ie limiting the number of graduation parties she is allowed to go to this weekend, or use of the car. Any tips about keeping my cool?? She's getting a new fall sports coach, a new school guidance counselor and she is finally back on speaking terms after a month of awkwardness with her prom date (prom was 4 weeks ago).

I remember hating these parts of high school and thinking my parents were out to ruin my life... I guess it's payback time for me. Ha Ha. And my freshman D escapes to her room to avoid all tension. She's the one who should be stressing with 6 final exams next week in 3 days. She's not pleasant either....

Sad, very sad. Should I hire a standbye mommy and exit the house as much as possible?

[shellis]

No juniors in my house yet, just a freshman. And she just got grounded for life. Talk about surly...I have spent all of my spare time this past week organizing different acceptable things to keep her busy this summer, so she is not stalking around the house staring at me. Is it normal for them to try those things that we have warned them against time and again? Is being young a good reason to do stupid things? (her words)

I have so far gotten her set up with one long day a week volunteering at a thrift store. Another busy day doing tutoring at an inner city outreach. One or two days of regular babysitting. We will also be making regular trips to the library since she is only allowed the distraction of reading right now.

I guess we all go through this stuff, just really hoping that her bad choices will improve with age. I wish she was more stressed about her finals instead of worrying about hanging out with friends and all that she is now missing out on.

[mamabear1234]

similar to momofthreeboys, my child is just tired. Sports are dragging on, and end of the year projects in the AP classes are a pain!

[SteveMA]

Common phrase at our house these days, 'you know, you CAN spend all summer in your room". I understand that they are edgy and it's been a stressful year but we certainly don't put up with attitudes here and need to be reminded of that, a lot lately . It's been shortened to "room?", like just now when I had to run DD to school and she took on an attitude...keeping in mind she COULD have taken the BUS.....

[lvvcsf]

Junior D is a good kid, bright, generally hard working, but not always pleasant to be around. It seems she lost the desire or ability to carry on a conversation with us around her sophmore year. One anecdote. She plays viola in several orchestras and takes private lessons. We were paying for them and in return she promised to practice. About midway through her sophmore year we realized she was doing very little practicing. We discussed it came up with some solutions that really didn't work. Finally we decided what we wanted was for her to practice and what she wanted was the private lessons. She had a bank account. We told her we would pay her for practicing and she had to pay for the lessons out of her account. She had some money in her account so it took a little while but she did start practicing once she saw her balance declining. Her attitude about practicing improved too.

[ldavis]

double whammy, surly Jr. and Soph.
School cant end soon enough...

[livn487]

@lvvcsf: It's an interesting idea to "pay her for practicing and she had to pay for the lessons out of her account." Do you mind sharing the details about paying her for practice? How much time for how much money? It's great when the kids need to take on ownership for budgeting their money (and time)!

[joszacem]

Glad to hear my S is not the only one. We need a week and 2 days. SAT this Saturday, 3 finals next week, state track meet next friday and ACT next Saturday. Then he will sleep for a week and start thinking about college apps.

(I agree junior year is the hardest, until college.)

Good luck all.

[ordinarylives]

Rising junior is "cruisin' for a bruisin'" as we used to say. Her job starts next week. Thank goodness.

[romanigypsyeyes]

I was terrible my last few weeks as a junior. 4 years later, I still remember. I had 5 AP exams, a few finals, and I was doing the school play essentially on my own (from a tech standpoint) as the other 3-4 techies bailed out on me. So I was at school until midnight almost every day of the week while balancing the other crap.

I also ended up getting H1N1 during May so... I blame my very, very bad mood on that

Just hang on, it's almost over

[oldfort]

Junior year is the toughest year. Most of them are exhausted by the time summer comes around. It is also a scary time for them because it is when they need to finalize their college list. D2 was very stressed last year. We did go away for 2 weeks right after junior year, she didn't do any work. She did spend the time to decide which school she was going to ED.

I don't usually take too much attitude from my kids, stressed or not. I expect them to be polite and not take it out on us. I would let them know when they start rolling their eyes or have an edge to their voice. Hey, I am stressed too.

[ldavis]

What is a rising junior?

[romanigypsyeyes]

A student who will be a junior in the fall.

[oldfort]

Never mind my post then. I was thinking of rising senior.

[lvvcsf]

@ livn487

Lessons cost $25/wk. We pay her $4.25/half hour of practice up to 4 hours a week. She can potentially make $34/wk which we figure helps when weeks get busy and she has too much home work studying etc. to do. She typically only has about 42 weeks of lessons and she can practice whenever she wants so she has opportunities to bank money. We'll adjust the payment as the cost of the lessons increase. One other thing is that she has to keep track of the practice time. The job ain't complete til the paper work is done!